Free Speech at Risk

[Free]

Senate To Sneak Through Internet Kill Switch Bill
Legislation likely to be attached to Defense Authorization bill in bid to pass cybersecurity before midterms


Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, August 26, 2010

The Senate is attempting to sneak through the infamous Internet kill switch cybersecurity bill by attaching it to another piece of legislation that is almost guaranteed to pass – the defense authorization bill – in an underhanded ploy to avoid the difficult task of passing cybersecurity on its own.

“It’s hard to get a measure like cybersecurity legislation passed on its own,” Democratic Senator Thomas Carper, who is co-chair of a Senate subcommittee with cybersecurity oversight, told Government Information Security.

That’s why lawmakers pushing cybersecurity have resolved to introduce the legislation as a “rider” to a Senate defense bill that is likely to be easily passed before the midterm elections.

Senators are still working to merge two different versions of the cybersecurity bill, one sponsored by Senator Joe Lieberman and another sponsored by Democrat Jay Rockefeller, into a single omnibus package, in preparation for a final vote when the Senate returns to session in mid-September.

“We’re very close to where we need to be in developing a joint proposal,” said Carper.

Lawmakers are in a race to pass cybersecurity before the midterms because if they wait until Congress returns after the November 2nd vote, the chances of getting the bill through “would significantly dim should the Republicans pick up a significant number of seats”. That leaves a four week window from the middle of September to the start of election campaigning for Senators to sneak through the legislation.

Lieberman’s version of the cybersecurity bill includes language that would hand President Obama the power to shut down parts of the world wide web for at least four months with no congressional oversight in the event of a cyber attack on critical infrastructure systems in the U.S.

Senators argue that they will be able to attach the Internet kill switch bill to the Defense Authorization Act because cybersecurity is a component of national security. However, the primary justifications behind treating “cybersecurity” as a national security matter are completely overblown and erroneous.

Proponents of cybersecurity have constantly argued that government needs to have more power over the Internet because cyber-terrorists could hack in and dismantle the entire U.S. power grid, large industrial plants, and the national water supply. This is a complete misnomer because, as a recent Wired News article highlighted, power grid and drinking water systems, “Are rarely connected directly to the public internet. And that makes gaining access to grid-controlling networks a challenge for all but the most dedicated, motivated and skilled — nation-states, in other words.”

As we documented in our piece on the issue, the threat from cyber-terrorists to the U.S. power grid or water supply is minimal. The perpetrators of an attack on such infrastructure would have to have direct physical access to the systems that operate these plants to cause any damage. Any perceived threat from the public Internet to these systems is therefore completely contrived and strips bare the real agenda behind cybersecurity – to enable the government to regulate free speech on the Internet.

This was revealed when Senator Lieberman told CNN’s Candy Crowley that the real motivation behind cybersecurity was to mimic the Communist Chinese system of Internet policing.

“Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too,” said Lieberman.

As we have documented, the Communist Chinese government does not disconnect parts of the Internet because of genuine security concerns, it habitually does so only to oppress and silence victims of government abuse and atrocities, and to strangle dissent against the state.

The decision to try and sneak through the Internet kill switch bill as part of another package of legislation is undoubtedly a reaction to increasing awareness about how the terms of the bill would completely undermine the foundations of the Internet as an outlet of truly unregulated free speech.

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http://www.prisonplanet.com/senate-to-s ... -bill.html

[Bob Kuczewski]

Great post.

It points out three big problems. The first is the ability of congress to force unpopular legislation on us by attaching it to critical legislation. The second is the government's desire to control of the internet. The third is the potential vulnerability of our infrastructure via the internet.

The first and second speak for themselves, but the third is what I find most annoying. There should be no critical infrastructure that depends on the internet in any way or is vulnerable via the internet in any way. Period. If anyone is building or fielding systems which create such dependency or vulnerability, then that's what should be corrected.

I get really annoyed by people who claim the need to shut down free speech for our protection or benefit. Can you say "HGAA"?

Thanks for a good post Warren.

[Free]

ARRRGHHHH!!!

I just spent a lot of time composing a message to this group, hit submit, and poof it was gone into never neverland.. my login had expired.. should have saved it.. arrrrghhhh!

It takes me so long to write something coherant and I've got to move on to other things today.

Thanks anyway Bob, for the opportunity.

w

[Bob Kuczewski]

Ouch!!

I'm sorry about that. I don't know if it's a forum setting or not. I know it's happened to me so many times on other forums that I routinely copy and paste any long posts into a separate editor as a back up. It only takes a few seconds, to select all, Control-C (copy in most windowing environments), and paste it into some other application. On the bright side, whenever I've failed to do that, I've had to start again from scratch ... and it often turned out better the second time.

I did check the settings and I have it set to allow an unlimited amount of time to edit a message. But there may be other time-outs in the forum that I don't know yet, and there may be other time-outs between you and the server. I know this is very very very painful (believe me, I know), so I'll keep an eye out for anything else to keep it from happening. But my best advice is to copy and paste your work before pressing any other buttons.

[Free]

Sotomayor Says Court May Rule to Limit First Amendment in Response to Wikileaks


Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
August 28, 2010

On Thursday, talking to students at the University of Denver, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the Wikileaks case will result in the Court likely weighing the First Amendment against national security. She made the comment in response to a question posed by a student.

“That was not the beginning of that question, but an issue that keeps arising from generation to generation, of how far we will permit government restriction on freedom of speech in favor of protection of the country,” Sotomayor said. “There’s no black-and-white line.” According to Sotomayor, the balance between national security and free speech is “a constant struggle in this society, between our security needs and our first amendment rights, and one that has existed throughout our history.”

Following the release of over 90,000 documents by Wikileaks in July, the Pentagon found no evidence that the disclosure harmed U.S. national security or endangered American troops in the field. The Pentagon review team consists of military intelligence analysts, lawyers and others working for the Joint Chiefs of Staffs and other elements of the Defense Department.

The Obama administration and certain members of Congress, however, have portrayed the release as a dire threat to national security. Obama asked Britain, Germany, Australia, and other allies to consider criminal charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the organization is guilty of “moral culpability” in the murder of U.S. soldiers. The ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Peter King, said the release of documents violates espionage laws and amounts to treason. The FBI is investigating and the Justice Department said it was looking into pursuing criminal charges in the case. Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, has demanded the death penalty for SPC Bradley Manning, the man arrested and charged with providing the documents to Wikileaks.

Julian Assange had contacted the White House prior to releasing the documents and the New York Times acted as an intermediary. Wikileaks wanted to give the government a chance to make sure innocent people were identified, but the White House did not respond to the offer. The Times, Britain’s The Guardian, and the German weekly Der Spiegel published selected Wikileaks documents without consulting the government.

Sotomayor’s comment is a warning that the Supreme Court may soon use the Wikileaks case to restrict the First Amendment. In the United States, the corporate media did not report on her comments, with the notable exception of the Associated Press.

Prior to her comments, Sen. Charles Schumer and Sen. Dianne Feinstein said the Free Flow of Information Act may need to be modified in response to Wikileaks. The senators want to change the language to specify that Wikileaks and organizations like it will not be able to use the act to protect the identities of confidential sources. Kurt Wimmer, an attorney representing the Newspaper Association of America, agreed with this exclusion. “There’s a distinction (between) how Wikileaks works and how news media organizations work,” he said and described Wikileaks as more of “a drop box for leaked documents” than a legitimate news source.

As the government prepares to roll back the First Amendment under the rubric of national security, we should consider the words of Hugo Black, considered one of the most influential Supreme Court justices in the 20th century, who said the following in the Pentagon Papers case:

In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.

http://www.infowars.com/sotomayor-says- ... wikileaks/

Kurt Nimmo edits Infowars.com. He is the author of Another Day in the Empire: Life In Neoconservative America.

[Bill Cummings]